“Nostalgia paints a smile on the stony face of the past.”

-Mason Cooley

A study published in the European Journal of Personality found that the benefits that are naturally experienced as a result of nostalgia are not significantly affected by an individual’s level of neuroticism. 

This research was conducted by Julius Frankenbach, Tim Wildschut, Jacob Juhl, and Constantine Sedikides, all researchers at the Department of Psychology, Saarland University. 

Nostalgia, a social emotion that entails a heartfelt longing for the past, serves the purpose of conferring three main benefits: facilitating self-orientation (optimism and self-esteem), existentiality (self-preservation and the meaning of life), and sociality (social connectedness). This cross-culturally observed emotion is often triggered by external stimuli (i.e., music, scents) and internal stimuli (i.e., loneliness, negative affect). 

Based on the idea that nostalgia does contain negative elements involving bittersweet afterthoughts and does not typically reduce negative affect, how positively or negatively one experiences this emotion is entirely unique. 

Therefore, the question of whether or not individual levels of neuroticism function to attenuate the psychological benefits of nostalgia was investigated.

This research was conducted on the basis of a comprehensive meta-analysis also known as a two-step individual participant data meta-analysis. 

The researchers found studies that measured trait-level neuroticism and experimentally induced nostalgia. The effects of nostalgia on self-orientation (inspiration and optimism), existentiality (meaning in life and self-continuity), and the social self (autobiographical memory functions) were examined between individuals who were high-level and low-level neurotics. As well, the effects of nostalgia on negative and positive affect as a function of neurotic levels were examined.

The first finding was that nostalgia alone does prove to significantly increase self-orientation, existentiality, and the social self. They also found that high levels of neuroticism function to significantly decrease these three dependent variables. 

The interaction between neuroticism and nostalgia shows that there is no significant effect of this association on either self-orientation, existentiality, or sociality. This means that individuals who differ in their neurotic levels (high vs. low) show no variance in nostalgia-induced psychological benefits. 

The nostalgia and neuroticism interaction also displayed no significant effects on individuals’ positive and/or negative affect. 

In conclusion, the researchers found that neuroticism did not modify the experimental production of nostalgia on positive or negative affect, nor on the three psychological benefits of nostalgia (self-orientation, existentiality, and sociality).